People as fodder: How can they rise above? Even the president admires those who, like him, take advantage of others for their own purposes: obstruct working people's autonomy, education, mobility, financial cushion. Persuade, demonize dissent. Culture, religion, politics at work. Photos. By Dint. Hub for conflict issues: Studying War.

Search This Blog

Above: Lake Geneva, Switzerland. At Montreux.

Fodderize v.t. 1. To break down individual components; to make fungible; to disregard difference; to render one easily substituted for another 2. To impose sub-quality goods or services upon, with little recourse 3. To cap role choices, hinder access to resources regardless of merit, and so avoid competition 4. To manage perception by propaganda-spin techniques, while concealing dispositive facts 5. To manipulate, lure, exploit, deceive

Translate

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Russia would agree that the present pre-political-marriage status of This Mr. T to the US electorate is not sacramentally complete, and unconsummated, of course. There has only been a betrothal contract that can be broken off. Historically, such an arrangement, as interim, can be cancelled. Make the injured party whole again, and money u$ually work$ to $alve hurt feeling$. See "Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia," The State of the Modern Russian Family, and Particularly that of the Joint or Household Community of Great Russia (modern as 1891, at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/kovalm.asp), This is Lecture II by historian Maxime Kovalevsky at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/koval2.asp, see bio.

This business of breaking (or unilaterally modifying contracts) can be a way to get rich, so there should be little resistance. See Contents at How to Get Rich, by Donald Trump and Meredith McIver, 2004. Just say, Donald, we tried, we really did, but you are the wrong man for this marriage. As you say in the book: Big mistake is to marry the wrong person. And, don't equivocate.

Best course for the long term: Let the people break off this ill-entered-into engagement to Mr. Trump before he fully ripens. Reconvene the Electors, unshackled. Or just write in the runner-up. After all, this is only a contract and contracts are made to be broken to get a better deal, and there will be someone else, fear not those who muddy waters, etc.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

1. The GOP plans to rename the postal service abbreviation for the District of Columbia.

2. This is part of the first-100-day push of the new Administration. New legislation effectuating the rename is based on the GOP objecting to the postal service. The postal service abbreviates District of lColumbia as DC.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Alt-solution without deportation. The stay-with-burden solution by Dhimmi.

.

Historically, Islamic conquerors took a hard line in control. Consequences flowed from a legal system without quarter: objective, impersonal, minimal equity intervention to soften the result. That worked in Spain for centuries. Dhimmitude applied. Muslim and Jew and Christian under the Caliphate each knew what could and could not be done. As to laws for the non-Muslim, the dhimmi, those laws provided that dhimmi could remain in the land, but the dhimmi had to pay a special tax,could not own land, had no say in governance. With the humiliation of those burdens, and the threat of persecution if the individual disobeyed, the dhimmi could live a life with that reduced financial reward and status, but otherwise undisturbed. This was, in effect, a harsh gangster-type protection system, not a gauzy happy time for all. But it provided a way to stay, a reason to go if the humiliation became too intolerable, and without slaughter, expulsions. See Life as a Dhimmi in Medieval Islamic Spain, https://world.wng.org/2016/09/life_as_a_dhimmi_in_medieval_islamic_spain

There was another way out. If the dhimmi converted, then the status rose to that of the other Muslims. This was no utopian solution for multiculturalism, because the hierarchy of who was right was fixed (Islam was right). A balance was struck however. That is the key. And it lasted until the punitive-vengeful Christians took over: Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 took the expulsion-death approach as to the Jews after retaking Spain.

Governments and the Other, as seen by the Already Here. What laws can foster national progress without killing the humanity in all of us. Old textbook.Pestalozzi Institute (now museum), Yverdons-les-Bains
We know that a moderately administered dhimmitude works. That is probably why certain government leaders here propose tracks to citizenship or guest worker status. How to get that back on track, when punishment and enforcement are so much more personally satisfying, from above.

Bear the burden, and remain. Administration not punishment. The idea was to use ongoing administration; not to removing the population from the path by slavery or death: the idea of the "superior" victor (the Muslim there) imposing economic and political limitation on the "inferior" vanquished (Christian or Jew), with economic, social and political benefit resulting if the person converted. See 'dhimmitude at http://www.dhimmitude.org/; and discussed at Europe Road Ways Themes - Kosovo, Dhimmi status.

4. Back off.

Seek consensus, not agreement. Consensus is giving permission for something, not necessarily agreeing with it. Ultimate dignity: choice. How to live a life. Somebody can give permission for the other to have a small farm, zone for it, without agreeing with what he does. See Rob Sandelin's work at http://www.ic.org/nica/Process/Consensusbasics.htm .

Option for Electors: Free to vote conscience under given circumstances.

Trials are looming as to a President-Elect, with continuances prior granted and now should be finished. Popular vote went the other way. Let Electors in those two circumstances vote conscience, if they choose.

Update to Foundations of Elections and Voter Exploitation:.

Address voter remorse when a re-election is not feasible, by providing an option to Electors to vote conscience without penalty, and as they see fit -- based on their own responses to events. This would occur under two circumstances.

A. Frame the period between election and Electoral College as a constructive rescission period during which, under two circumstances, electors have the power to decide their vote based on conscience and not State or Party rule.

This constructive rescission is optional for each Elector, and only triggered in two circumstances:

1. Where the popular vote went to the losing candidate in the national electoral count, as a check and balance to the resulting overall winner;

2. Where there are outstanding, non-frivolous legal actions filed more than 12 months before the election, and against the winning candidate, that remain unresolved prior to the Electoral College count.

Such trial outcomes may be relevant to the election, and in an abundance of caution must be settled or trial begun prior to the electoral college vote.

If trial has commenced and is ongoing, then the Electoral College vote shall be postponed until trial conclusion.

All trial proceedings shall be public.

In the interim, the current President shall serve until the electoral vote at the conclusion of the trial(s) and then until the Inauguration.

B. For other exigent circumstances, or just on whim, the Elector may as currently provided cast a rogue vote, but such Elector shall remain subject to the penalties and fines of the State or Party as are currently in effect, so long as the meet Constitutional muster.

................................................................

Initial post: Foundations of elections as exploiting voters.

.
I. Overview. The trajectory of election 2016 is over. What did that election represent? Did 2016 represent overall position support, such as a) repudiation of an establishment; or b) rejection of current healthcare laws. Or did 2016 represent instead the perfection of spin creating a miasma of negativity, just going in the wrong direction, all is terrible, without accountability for merits. What facts support those conclusions? Consider the endless reruns of film loops of speeches, interactions, the dogged reporting on polls, talking heads talking their heads off about what people merely thought, without vetting, as though bald beliefs count without vetting.

Go back to Peter Lombard 1095-116- CE, scholastic theologian, for dialectics in how to resolve disagreements in a rational way, see http://www.iep.utm.edu/lombard/. There the focus is religion, but the process is what counts. Enable a person to vet an argument before committing to a result, before the tripwire trips and someone becomes a mere follower.

B. The science of spin in our culture: let the people in on the secret. Why should they be guinea pigs for free?

2. Move to advertising psychological research and businesses that conduct it, see http://www.neuromarketing-labs.com/services/neuroadvertising/are now a science. What do advertisers of any product do (including a presidential product, because this is indeed a sales matter and probably should trigger veracity controls on speech as in any commercial matter)?

Apply the tactics as prescribed, mask the motivation of the speaker to match the motivation of the audience, aim at the population targeted and not others, repeat over time, and the persuasion takes effect.

Propaganda defense: Spot the tactics. See how the techniques are even ready for mass understanding. For the pop summary of propaganda, see http://www.propagandacritic.com

4. See what techniques pass under the radar of many people. See 'false equivalence,' where merely equal time is given to speeches, regardless of the weight based on merit. Where is investigative journalism when it comes to political speech? Surely we have crossed the line into commercial speech when people pay advertisers and buy time.

II. Note that none of these analyses of "propaganda" include in the category a discussion on the merits, the pros and cons of an issue where people can check the reliability, veracity of the claims made. That kind of methodology is a counter-force to propaganda, and also are longstanding in importance (now overshadowed).

Media has abdicated its information role, condones exploitation, perhaps to avoid charges of abridging free speech. That is misguided. It is only the government that is restricted from abridging free speech; private entities can use their own judgment for their own reasons, as they already do, and I would add, abridging or weighing political speech should require disclosure of what has been omitted, corrected, or should be. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment

Rant. Exploitation, whether by gutting Dodd Frank, or keeping people immobile, hungry, sick so they cannot compete, is inconsistent with longterm stable democracy. Education, if not in schools (no common core?), then by media can recalibrate justice for people who may well not have the educational background to assess, vet, critique candidates in their own interest.

Explore, before this election fades. Does media have any obligation to counter exploitation, or is politics just another used car-type transaction-with-talking points. Media itself is exploited by the exploiters. Media, then, also has the power -- and obligation -- as a baseline in all walks of life -- to promote fair dealing. Any less promotes instability, injustice that goes in circles.

Disclosure. I respect and honor the office of President of the United States. I do not, at this point, respect the methods and mindset of the man who has been elected, and I believe largely because media left those largely unquestioned, to hold that office. I have every hope I can come to respect the man who chose those methods, but if humilitation, bandwagon, fact concealment, disinformation, sexual exploitation, intimidation, name-calling and condoning violence continue, that respect will not arise. Will the manner of the man rise to a level worthy of the office.

Media guidelines. For the future: Watch spin. The science of spin. Rather than reporting only on what someone came to believe (polling), after years of hammering and pejoratives over the airwaves, report instead on what persuasion techniques were used by each side for the voter person to believe that way.

This media can and should do as part of basic voter information, to enable voters to guard against their own exploitation. Do a timeline. When was the issue first raised. Who raised it. What facts. How did facts change. Bait and switch. Innuendo. Fair dealing. As important in politics as in commerce.

Why the need to counter voter exploitation? Because elections are, have become commercial in nature. The candidate, the seller, making sales pitches to close the deal. The voter, the buyer, choosing a candidate without effective means of testing the good faith and truth of the sales pitch. Even without cause, let the voter constructively rescind in a given time frame, constructively by giving the electors the option to do so under the given circumstances. Allow a path.

Where those circumstances do not exist, a vote against the rules, Party or State, shall be with civil consequence for usual faithless electors, as set by the party or state, so long as those are within Constitutional guidelines.

B. State Recourse against Electoral College rogue voting: must pass Constitutional muster.

There shall be no automatic penalty that is contrary to Constitutional rights. No strict liability where the result is so onerous or arbitrary or punitive in this civil area as to violate the Constitution.

A State that is winner-take-all may forego a vote entirely on the first ballot, as a means of countering an effort by a Faithless Elector to vote conscience on the first ballot.

All other Electors, from States not winner-take-all, may vote conscience on the first ballot, subject to the fines or penalties as are permissible.

A rogue Elector shall not be subject to criminal investigation or criminal penalty, loss of liberty or property. Rogue voting is not a crime.

................................................................................................
II. Pre-election interest: Still relevant. A State may forego an actual vote if it is a winner-take-all State, and such status was in effect and duly publicized at least 90 days prior to the Election.

A. Overview: The Electoral College faces the issue in a close election of the Faithless Elector.

How binding shall be a State's decision to consider itself winner-take-all. Does that entitlement to winner-take-all mean that Electors in such state do not need to vote at all, with their bound votes merely submitted for the count instead. In such case, can they then go off on a frolic of their own, liability-free for a second or later ballot, if neither candidate wins on the first ballot? Must Electors vote on a first ballot even where they later disagree with their own pledge to follow the State's rules?

"The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not require that Electors be completely free to act as they choose and therefore, political parties may extract pledges from electors to vote for the parties' nominees."

Conclusion: Lawyers, prepare to argue that winner-take-all requires no actual vote on a first ballot; the winner iis entitled to all those votes by fiat, without additional step or objection by individual Faithless Electors. They have to wait until the second ballot.
................................................................................................................................

I. Rules of the Electoral College:

It is useful to check the wording of the actual law or rule apparently applicable in any situation, before assuming a refusal of an elector to vote is a problem to anyone.

Totem pole hearsay says the elector says he will not vote as an elector. Is he required to vote at all in a winner-take-all state? Photo: Off-road in Romania.

More news, informal: This elector says, says Rachel Maddow in finest totem-pole hearsay tradition [from this morning, at rerun of her Friday evening show], that the recalcitrant elector plans to pay the $1,000 penalty (where is that? where are the rules?) rather than cast his vote Hillary's way.

"48 states, including Washington, use a “winner-take-all” system; the presidential ticket that receives the most votes in the state are entitled to all of Washington’s electoral votes (emphasis supplied)."

C. If a candidate wins in winner-take-all, then there need be no act of voting by the individual electors of that state? Looks that way.

The Electoral College site suggests on its own a broader latitude, suggesting that a vote is indeed needed (despite the plain language otherwise). So, if that holds, is the obligation of an elector merely a matter of good faith??

B. The website indeed addresses what happens if an elector does not vote as pledged. Elector on a frolic of his own.

But that means a requirement to vote in the first place in a winner-take-all state, on the first ballot; which interpretation is contested here.

The Magic Website and its term, Faithless Electors:

"Some state laws provide that so-called 'faithless Electors' may be subject to fines or may be disqualified for casting an invalid vote and be replaced by a substitute elector. The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution. No Elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged."

*****"Throughout our history as a nation, more than 99 percent of Electors have voted as pledged."

C. The site even provides a tentative non-binding list of the kinds of fees and penalties a State may or may not exact from a Faithless Elector. See site, and its own disclaimer against itself. Perhaps there is no penalty at all?? In Washington, the stakes are merely a party pledge and a thousand bucks.

So an Elector can throw an election by ante-ing up $1,000.00 in Washington State. Could happen. .

Topic: The behavior of Anthony Weiner in
a) now perhaps committing a crime (sexual exploitation of a minor); and
b) furthering that activity using a computer with others' material on it,
c) disregarding the negative likely consequences affecting involuntary third parties.

Effect: These behaviors arise to the level of Paraphilic Disorder according to DSM-V, suggests this Everyman's Observer. Anthony Weiner's disregard of the harsh negative effects of his storing his means of communication on computers where others' information is stored seems to require a strong diagnosis of pathology.

It is predictable that his behavior would invite legal examination in drawing in a minor, if he did; it is predictable, then, that material of others on his means of communication would then be exposed.

Did he also back up the other's information there, or did Huma Abedin do that herself, and did she use that computer as a primary sender as to some or all? There is now a serious impact on voters, even if not Weiner's own voters any more.

Director Comey in mis-joining two separate investigations: Three fatal flaws.

1) A three-week delay in your learning from your staff of the emails on Mr. Weiner's computer(s) (possibly pertinent to another investigation, Clinton), and

2) The resulting three-week delay in getting the necessary additional warrant for examination of the other emails (is there really probable cause here, or did the dump put pressure on that issue as well?), displays incompetence as a non-partisan leader (Hatchery).

3) Your scantily clad Friday night news dump disclosing your late knowledge but before a warrant had even been issued, confirms it. People, vote fairness here. That is the only matter which is certain.

......................................................

Weiner Pix-Texting. Is it a Psychopathology?Sexting diagnoses. What category?

Is it mere Paraphilia (one example in a spectrum of non-normative sexual behavior),

When does mere deriving pleasure from a behavior reach the clinical-intervention level of Paraphilic Disorder.

Ask DSM-V.

Either way, the issue of identification of a situation-condition soon gets caught in technicalities. The important matter, however, with the new DSM-V is the nature of any harm caused by the behavior. As to Anthony Weiner, make a little list: These descriptions and consequences, and not categories of some manual, will decide a candidacy:

Descriptive: To some, the Weiner Conundrum Syndrome is exploitive, foisting reasonably anticipated edgy visual and text on others without advance consent; it is a power play. You are worthless, I do what I want, is the communication. Can't catch me. I am beyond accusation. It disrespects women, is clueless, says the wise Pelosi. Keep going: Flawed candidate judgment, self-control, trust diminution. Can one who uses women in this way be trusted to represent their interests against other impositional behavior.

Pathology: Not necessarily, but with the negative impact by his behavior on his constituents' confidence in his judgment, trustworthiness, the harm he does to himself may tip the descriptive to the pathological.

Update on possible diagnoses-from-news: Even the overview in the NYT, offering possible speculative diagnoses based on the news coverage, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/nyregion/weiners-behavior-prompts-a-question-why-did-he-do-it.html?_r=0; includes no reference by a mental health professional to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V, current). What cubby would they use in the DSM-V. They refer to an addiction with neurological roots possibility, but sexual addiction is not in the DSM-V, we think. Mere indiscretion blown big because of our own fears of the topic?

A. Meanwhile, fill in the gaps as to the categories, the professional angles seen by an amateur. So far, these seem to be so, and the good news is that we are beyond (in the DSM-V) trying to list what is normal and what is not. What matters is the impact, the consequence. There pathology enters in, not before.

1. Paraphilia in itself, a
non-normative sexual preference, is not necessarily
psychopathological. It only becomes psychopathological where it cannot
be contained or changed and there is danger or harm to others, or to the
person -- including his extreme distress, where the person becomes
virtually incapacitated. Such is the change in analysis in the new DSM-V. No longer are mere behaviors listed and called paraphilia, and so stigmatized. The added factors are needed to create the now stand-along paraphilic disorder.

2. Analysis of sexual behavior, and what to categorize as a pathology, has changed. Mere paraphilia, or non-normative sexual behavior, is now not a psychopathology in itself, requiring or suggesting clinical intervention. There must be more. The behavior must either cause distress or impairment to the individual, or bring on a likelihood of or actual harm to the person or others. Then the behavior qualifies as more than mere paraphilia, non-normative sexual behavior. It becomes paraphilic disorder. That is the new and only category in the new DSM V. See the changes in the DSM-V from DSM-IV. *

3. That means that the mental health professional community guided by the Diagnistic and Statistical Manual no longer list what is norm-al, and what is not. What individuals find rewarding and pleasurable vary, without a listing needed, and may be left alone. But if they overstep the harm category, to self or others, broadly, then pathology analysis may step in.

B. What harm in his displays? Can it be broadly drawn, where some are exploiting their receipt of pix-texts for their own financial gain, even now. Harm to them? They are making bundles.

Go past the ones riding his coat-tails, or jock-elastics.

Anthony Weiner: his behavior in finding pleasure in pix-texting is not enough in itself to disqualify him as a candidate on grounds of a pathology. Instead, what may disqualify this candidate in the view of an electorate are issues unrelated necessarily to any psychopathology -- a pattern of poor judgment and exploitation in doing it, repeating despite the public eye likely to follow.

2) Weiner's flawed ability to analyze a totality, predict consequence, weigh, see his behavior as exploitive, and change his worldview if he really valued elective office, supposedly serving the public.

C. If he tried to change and failed this time, can we assume that the behavior will be an ongoing indulgence when he represents the City of New York. What does he propose to ensure, yes, ensure, he does not humiliate himself and exploit others in the future.

Impact on voters: Would he describe himself with the diagnosis of paraphilic disorder. Now, would even that disqualify him? What disorders disqualify a person from office? This one? Not necessarily. Wait and see. That's why we have voters. And why we need educated, informed voters.

A. Paraphilia is something like intense arousal to atypical objects or situations, with a spectrum range from the harmless to
the threatening. Nobody has found a bright line between unusual or merely out-of-norm sexual
tastes and paraphilia. Amateurs head to Wikipedia's Encyclopedia for a reasonable overview -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia/ Learn that the behavior qualitatively may or may not be illegal-criminal. It may be a mere choice, something that pleases the person. To change the behavior (as when there is harm or other pressure to change), requires long term therapy, and there should be subject to immediate interventions if there is danger to self or others, or the activities may create legal problems for themselves, see http://www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/guide/paraphilias-overview?page=3

B. Paraphilic Disorder. The behavior-spectrum paraphilia rises to paraphilic disorder as a matter of consequences, not a description of the act itself: Tthe person experiences distress from it, or is impaired by it, or the behavior is or is likely to cause harm to others.

New DSM-V. These two categories, found in the old DSM IV and leading to different conclusions as to treatment, have been combined into one category where both the qualititative description (a place on the spectrum) and the consequences occur or are likely to. That is the new Paraphilic Disorder.

That, in the new DSM-V, leaves the first category, the mere paraphilia, as meaning simply not in the norm. There is no pejorative. A person may have non-normative sexual preferences, but no harm no foul. Paraphilia does not mean psychopathological.

The old qualitative description of Paraphilia of DSM IV, the description; was separated from the consequence side, the old Paraphilic Disorder of DSM IV

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Update October 2016. Mike Pence believes that his personal religious belief is a proper ground for legislation for all. Matters of reproduction for him are defined by his religious ideology. Imposing religious ideology instead of rational basis for legislation is a radical departure from constitutional governmental function. Hold him accountable. Explore. Educate voters. The Pence Stance. A stance that imposes his religion's views on others.

Which way at the fork? Stop governmental intrusion into the personal sphere. If the deity is displeased with a personal decision, the deity can do as the deity will. It is not up to Pence or those of the Pence Stance. The religious issue determining policy is not new: Former Senator Gordon Smith R-Oregon said (tape NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/mormon-videos-leaked.html?_r=0, that he voted for the Iraq War because if it worked, the result could be expansion of Mormon opportunities there).

Personal 'epiphany" -- I see truth!
No basis for legislation for all. De Quincey's idea, visions of me-right,
Amok with politicians who impose.
Personal epiphany, flawed basis for legislation
Impacting autonomy within the wingspan.

Is this reasonable? Any who attempt to "fix" for me
How I exercise my moral life within my own wingspan,
Who enters and why, te he, will be disobeyed.
Quoth she, I ponder and act upon the epiphany of my life.
You do your own. Selah.
As she clapt the window to.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Adults operated upon as babies before 1986 without anesthetic:
Do they show more fear, stress, anxiety, acting out, behaviors than others.

1. Poverty has joined the list of traumas, stresses that negatively impact on brain development, see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/nyregion/studying-how-poverty-keeps-hurting-young-minds-and-what-to-do-about-it.html?_r=0. Brute force is not needed for the PTSD effect, is that so? The common theory looks at stress releasing the cortisol hormone, triggering fight-or-flight and changes in the prefrontal lobe, executive functioning in the brain; and the hippocampus, needed for fact memory, where there is chronic stress frequently found in poverty (and elsewhere): "neglect, abuse, maternal depression, parental discord". Genes also react to stress, see site. Needed: caring relationships with adults, consistency, in order for cortisol levels to decrease.

The brute force pain may be easier to study, but add the steady drumbeat of poverty where combined with stresses.

2. Follow the trails regarding preverbal physical pain:

Infants before about 1986 were subjected to even major surgery without anesthetic, see http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surgery-without-anesthesia-went-unchallenged-832387.html/. Testimonials are increasing about the experience, by adults claiming PTSD because of it. Search for no anesthetic before 1986 surgery infants, for example. There is research now, but the information is not always generally available. Does the DMS IV or IV pending, address the preverbal trauma in PTSD, see Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, IV, V Pending. Without that authentication, any perceived disordered behavior in a child or adult claimed to be from trauma will be dismissed by professionals as a disembodied, cause-less personality trait, to be addressed as it is -- only as to the specific individual in therapies. And easily ignored as to accountability, or even changing any behavior of the adults surrounding.

1. Research. Some material on the topic, or that appears to be, is not available except for a charge, see The Impact of Unintentional Pediatric Trauma: A Review of Pain, Acute Stress, and Posttraumatic Stress, see http://www.pediatricnursing.org/article/S0882-5963%2807%2900297-7/abstract?cc=y= Will someone read and review, preferably someone in the medical field. Note this is not intentional infliction of trauma -- or is it where the child has no clue -- a different issue of PTSD where caregiver, for example, is fear source as well as comfort source.

Another article deals with chronic pain and PTSD, also a different matter.

At issue for now, however, is a significant incident, or series of incidents, particularly at a preverbal stage, not the older person's chronic condition. See Conceptualizing and Treating Comorbid Chronic Pain and PTSD, at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684116/

2. Breadth of topic. The issue is broader than whether adults should change how we deal with children, to avoid trauma to them in their interest. Some pain in medical care is unavoidable, with worse risks in not acting at all. At issue for any survivor is the dignity of the child in learning there are roots to his behavior, not just random fault on his part somehow. If his ADD, ADHD, ongoing flares of something, are symptoms and not flaws, is that easier to deal with.

This causation supposition is not a leap from common sense. Where there is traumatic stress of very early childhood, even in a baby-infant, there already appears to be evidence that here is sufficient memory of that pain couched somewhere, that continues to shape and narrow the individual's thinking, judgment, safety, threat everywhere, perception of himself and his world. Is there ongoing anxiety, ADD, ADHD, flight and fight reactions triggered but more objectively to a present situation; and that does not reflect badly on the supposedly flawed child.

Noxious stress. Those old enough to be verbal are privileged. They talk. Their experience will get a name. Some experience no such durability of ill effect. They can snap out of
it. This is directed to the ones with shadow drivers at their wheel.

Others who were preverbal and experience the shadow driver at their wheel will never know what hit them. Is that so? We do know that
anesthetics for babies was not routinely administered until about 1986,
and that there were competing reasons -- a greater harm to the brain
from the anesthetic, for example. What was the research? Was that
researched? So, begin with the pool of people with scars from baby
operations, as an easy start. Ask them. Ask their families. Then
explore their traits, if anything is a dis. Then comes the difficult part: cause and effect. Or is it all coincidence, random synchronicity.

3. Symptoms

Issues of ability to relate appear to arise from infant-child fear and stress, affecting attachment patterns between child and caregiver. Secure relationship, anxious-ambivalent, anxious-avoidant, disorganized when the source of comfort is also the source of fear: See Trauma, PTSD, and Attachment in Infants and Young Children at http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treatment/children/trauma_ptsd_attachment.asp. That article focuses on child abuse, child neglect, and in the nonverbal child.

4. The long view of how we see pain. The cultural entitlement to inflict pain hierarchy.

For the culture, what indeed does pain matter if noone hears or responds to its call? Traditionally, it matters not. Animals at slaughter mills, for example, or abused animals, children, adults. But we live by a hierarchy of privilege: we, the humans, are exceptional. We do as we want with animals, say some, because that is Biblical (wrong, misinterpretation and mistranslation of early texts, but not the issue here).

5. Understanding affected adults, older populations, why they join what groups, for what safety. Find out. Do noxious experiences produce a muscle memory, a memory somewhere, that will be durable, shaping behavior into years that steer the person into a lifestyle designed to shield him from pain inflicted by others, as he may see it. Fear.

In particular, does the population operated on as little children without anesthetic, big operations in particular, the abdominal invasions for example, show as a group a significantly higher incidence of ADD, ADHD, inability to focus, sudden rage (road rage?), or ongoing embedded fear and anxiety, low self-esteem despite abilities, and more fear. Do they seek out mentors, follow firm group requirements. Add to the list.

Does that translate to a predilection to political parties in that age group, born and operated on without anesthetic before 1986, fear of expansion, fear of the new, fear of losing a control, a supremacism. Ask. Find out.

6. Morality. Recognizing the autonomous right of any living being to live its life with a minimum of inflicted pain and trauma. No gratuitous imposition of suffering, no assertion of supremacism based on a doctrine in the Widening Gap world.

7. Action step, despite The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths, see NYTimes, Science, The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths, opinion . Individuals and government: Pay
close attention to the environments and experiences of very little
children. Promote and fund the benign, the assurance, the welcoming, the expansive. Protect
against inflicted pain, blindfolding as to cause and effect of their condition, promote verbal understanding. What we do
and omit to do shapes their very brains.

How to explain that to the
spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child mentored groups? That is part of the conundrum, balancing issues, the Widening Gap. At least, identify the
issue, so some in those groups may consider, quietly. No attack, no abandonment, it can work to be with those you disagree with, as Atticus Finch's life attests, in Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee.

The stress response itself is not a disorder. It is an ordered response to the absolute horror of the condition experienced: and has a history extending back to Herodotus, through experiences including war (the Herodotus topic), but also rape, genocide, and torture. How else do people survive? It only becomes a disorder if life after is narrowed, interrupted, the person involuntarily subjected to its recurrence and lapses in judgment, because of it.

Expand the research more to include facets of child rape, and adult rape, where forcing oneself to stay still enhances survival, but then leads to the charge that she never fought, so wanted it; or the after-effects of centuries of skepticism re infant pain, that anesthetics were not used well into the 1980's, see The Infancy of Infant Pain, at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23548489/. What now-adults experienced this near-death, non-verbal trauma, torture, really. What are they like now? Any commonalities from their PTS?

How many who are now adults experienced post-traumatic stress related to that forced rigidity, unable to get away, flashbacks, droning fear, protect themselves from perceived annihilation, no options, terror unspoken; and what commonalities do those adults unknowingly share with older others whose trauma was conscious and responses later could be verbal.

So: Vex of the psyche. Circumstances. Immobility, terror, followed by recalibration of the system. Sum many sources:

recurring feelings of strangeness,

dissociation from others,

a marking, a setting one apart,

a drive to wander,

belonging no longer,

not fully alive, not fully dead, each, both, neither.

2. What to do? Learning from it, deciding to grow, to snap out of it, is not enough.

Epictetus, Greek stoic, sounds like a modern evangelical stereotypical preacher -- and found some positives in traditional ways of thinking, such as: "On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use." Morris at page 256.

That mere growth "solution" is happy-happy, not a volitional as its advocates chirp, overused, the bar to following religious and philosophical geniuses for transformation too high, or off the mark for the individual. Growth, roses, rise sometimes, but growth as a catch-all is also demeaning as a total response idea: suggesting a flawed effort when the scarred person fails to turn around.

3. Literature. Count the wanderers, the sufferers:PTSD in the classics. Helplessness and PTSD.

Ulysses took 20 years go get home, and during that time wandered with drugs, license; Gilgamesh, Civil War veterans heading west to wreak havoc, for some, and others rootless, see Morris at 74ff. War neuroses. Study the wars, the electric shock treatments: and wisdom.

One Dr. Rivers: "[T]he more helpless the patient felt, the more likely he was to be traumatized...." Morris at 97.

That element echoes strongly in rape.

Morris focuses on battle stress in his history, but also touches on rape. Spend time with the Notes section, the footnotes.

In trauma, it is more often the powerless and disenfranchised who are
so traumatized, suggests Morris at page 159. Apply that to rape. What elements are
psychiatric, pre-existing vunlerabilities; what elements are responses
to situation.

4. Is rehashing helpful? Letting it all out, again and again? What happens to secrets.

Is wartime or rape stress, coming to grips with extreme exploitation, immobility, absolute threat, mere "apophenia" -- from events that gain meaning only by looking back at them? What is the role of the uncanny, the idea of the doppelganger, heightened awareness, at p.105 - retrospective analysis, a forging of meaning. Imagination, the forge, into the spiritual.How else to put the puzzle of the broken mind together.

It is not an equal playing field. Many have interests in finding rugs to cover issues.

Not surprisingly, there has been resistance to normalizing PTSD in the military, where propaganda efforts had to be made to try to turn soldiers' narratives away from tha basal, I had to survive! to the party-line, patriotic I defended and fought for my nation's values. That puts the push against the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, see http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/VVAW_Kerry_Senate.html, and to support instead the mainstream then-ostrichlike patriotic Veterans of Foreign Wars American Legion, the Disabled American Veterans, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, see Morris at 147.

5. Military-related trauma, becoming accepted as its own field of study. It will only end when war ends. Expand the idea. Rape. It will only end when supremacist entitlement ends. Infant disregard. That may be the only PTS behind us. The others? No hope?
.........................................................

Friday, May 27, 2016

Update 2016. Why do I think current presidential candidates urging military force as default and spearhead, are wrong and ignorant of the strength of our military in new settings. Quiz your favorite candidate on knowledge of military operations manuals, and see how the candidate's proposed changes would produce "greater" results.

Newly emphasized: operative goals of stability, consideration of the environment of the action, unified action, conflict as a spectrum from peace-tending to warfare, peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, tactical simultaneous interaction of offense-defense-civil support (includes "stability force assistance" in stability); emphasis on mission command, not battle command; long-term considerations in "sustained conflict.", hybrid threats, combat analyzed in 6 functions, all relying on not only leadership but information (is that a fluid concept?) with goals of combining supports, and "cyber-electronic activities".

The new manual (I believe 2011 was the last?) continues to promote stability over traditional hit and run combat, what is the military assessment of whether to make further changes. What rethinking, if any, resulted from application of the stabilizing capacities of the military. Are current presidential contenders, seeking a return to blitzing, justified.

Iraq, surges, attitudes and implementation, have we given enough time for the new and long-term stability model to work. Can military type candidates, the old school, change with it; and will voters accept a different style?

A. Old school The Army watchword apparently used to be -- reward the bellicose, and pugilistic, sneering, and atrocious -- behavior that accompanies efforts to beat down the other side. Bellicoseandpugilisticsneeringandatrocious. Like Saturday Night Live. The words themselves become a caricature. See - this an update 10/5/08.

.

But the change leaves die-hards looking dysfunctional. The new 15th Edition of the Army Field Manual 3-0 ("Operations") was released February 2008.
.

B. New school

places stabilizing operations on a par with the traditional combat.

recognizes that stabilizing operations are as important as, if not more important than, battle.

requires fostering new "specific skill sets and organizational elements," and

Back in 1997, the military examined the issue, see A Charismatic Element of Military Leadership, in the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, by James J. Tritten and David M. Keithly.

W. Edwards Deming formulated the idea of TQM/TQL for Total Quality Management and Total Quality Leadership. This places "participatory" models of leadership over the older "transactional" models. The participatory, where ideas are recognized as multi-sourced.

2. Changing concepts: Good ideas, views, options can come from many levels of command and the rank and file, so encourage it. The participatory style is both positive and progressive.

This approach does not replace "authority." The military of course continues to recognize nuts and bolts consistent, predictable effectiveness, as a goal of military leadership training. It now adds, however, another cautious consideration of the value of personal "draw" in military effectiveness. It looks at this "charisma," not in itself, but as another facet of a good leader, now to be fostered with "selection, promotion and training."

3. Reliance on charisma alone, or in excess, has not worked well in the long run in the military. More trouble than worth, suggests the article.

Yet, the military now seeks to keep the value that charisma and include it - personal draw - in eliciting best performance under the command - and this is the military, remember. The article suggests it is time to recognize the need to foster ideas from many sources. Charismatic elements in leadership styles can be taught to do that in an optimal way.

4. The military is finally moving beyond bluff and bluster roostering. Moving to careful use of charisma as a personal draw quality in leaders, to enhance performance and productivity of those under the command.

Respect for the value of participation and climates for agreement are absolutely necessary for the 21st Century of global shrinkage.

And a degree of charisma is needed, even the military says. Personal draw. And this was back in 1997 - on the cusp of the 21st Century, to prepare for it. See also "Leadership in the Military Environment," 1999, including US Air Force, at ://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/ldmil/ldmil.htm Authoritarianism and force alone are not enough. Any more.

.
5. So the military is encouraged to develop the quality of personal draw to its useful degree, measured by long-term performance of those under the command; along with developing participation and the climate for agreement, and it is developing it. Train has left the station.

D. But can old military-bred people change with it. Look at current politics, its reliance on bull and bluster and force, and candidates in the mix.

This is a position section. It so far is critical of Mr. McCain, but not carelessly so.

1. Those considerations of the military and its change of mind, bring us to whether people can change with it. We are concerned from what we see so far in watching Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama in terms of bellicosity or stabilization styles.

Mr. McCain, in his most formative years a man of the 20th Century. A military man of the old school. His style as shown in his record and the recent candidates' presidential debate (denigration attempts, attempts to diminish his opponent, condescension - none of which worked) with Barack Obama, is dysfunctional today. His style does not lend itself to participation by anyone. He imposes.

His style does not lend itself to a climate fostering possible "agreement" as an alternative to combativeness. He just goes directly to confrontation and stays there.Mr. McCain? Bellicose and pugilistic, sneering and atrocious. That no longer is acceptable, or functional.

2. Will voters say, thanks but no thanks to combativeness?

Not all will - perhaps only those who identify as liberal will say no thanks.

This is an update - a recent study suggests that whether people are fearful, thus requiring force and certitude in their leaders to make them feel safe - is hard-wired to a degree. Others do not seem to respond fearfully, tolerate a range of responses, not necessarily the authoritarian. See "Political Attitudes Predicted by Physiological Traits, at ://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/18/political-attitudes-predicted-by-physiological-traits/ and "Conservative Fear, Liberal Tolerance May Be Hard-Wired," at ://scoog.newsvine.com/_news/2008/09/19/1884407-study-conservative-fear-liberal-tolerance-may-be-hard-wired.

Regardless of the political use of fear - we are concerned that the military mindset, force, authoritarianism, that has bound his thinking for decades, is putting McCain at odds with even his beloved military mentors

We, too, in elections are in a battle of ideas, with non-state adversaries. Combat makes smoke and causes casualties, but is short-lived. Ideas return. McCain's attitudes, and sass as the dominant characteristic of a running mate, all are reversions to combat mode, and outmoded. Iraq?

E. Does this distinction, this new thrust to working with people explain the "surge?" You betcha.

Even the military surge most recently in Iraq (too soon to evaluate - have to wait until we are back at pre-surge levels to see if anything "holds") the effort there was accompanied with equal cultural-sensitivity operations, not numbers of soldiers alone as was customary in McCain era warfare. Change, McCain. Can you? Will you?
..............................................
*["Meme" section separated out to The Fodder Site - Memes Spreading]

Friday, April 1, 2016

Counter the idea that the ordinary citizen is fodder, to be led at establishment media's will. Update 2016: FCC supports expanding a low-income subsidy for internet use. This falls short of a freebie, but a move in the appropriate direction of computers in every home. How so? Examine freebies in American history, from inheritances, to homestead acts, and beyond.

A freebie, or a subsidy, can be a boost In time - Somethin' for near nuthin' means somethin' - Low-income citizens may be fodder not much longer. The FCC - How to turn all of us into more productive participants, citizens. Breaking down the access barrier: mobility through information, means.

Retrospective: Back in 2013, Thomas Friedman suggested a way that the President should promote the truth of today's world in globalization, what jobs are past and how to open opportunity for today's and tomorrow's jobs, reinvestments needed, and -- the best part -- to get and stay aspirational:

1. Freebies, such as internet equipment and access, even through subsidies, increase productivity. Internet access targets to long-term societal and personal productivity goals, not in job-seeking, mobility. Wire the nation. That is as true today as it was in 2008 when this post was first written, in 2013 when I updated it, and now in 2016 -- ditto and progress made.

3. At issue today is America's productivity, its ability to compete, its funding of essential functions. An approach: look at the role of a targeted boost, to individuals or groups. Look at a boost that helps address the inability of many to get easily online. That bar to the information highway, with all its potholes, hinders their productivity, access to resources for quality of life. The bar can be geographic, economic, ignorance. Lower that bar and let people come over. Is that possible or feasible?
.
A boost to online access is not problem-free. But it clearly has the capacity to improve literacy, education, and foster information exchange, unlimited by private ownership media filters. Do it with computers in storefronts in every urban and rural area. See it already in much of Eastern and Western Europe. Wire the country. Use of it for terrorism, porn? It already is used that way, rather freely. The benefit to the many outweighs that - and that has to be addressed anyway, and better. Get to it.

Boosts are part of our heritage - with both its positive and negative side. Time to accent-u-ate the positive. Give an ear at ://www.jibjab.com/view/158980/.
.

I. The Place of the Freebie in Achievement.

The Giveaway. .

The Inheritance. ,

The Matching Fund. Any Boost.

Overview.

The essence of any economy's growth is targeted stimulus. Any individual life benefits from some targeted freebies.

Here, after a look at the history of our own freebies in this country, our heritage of giveaways; we propose a particular one: We lay out the idea of a freebie nationwide, to stimulate seven weaknesses in our productivity at one blow. Use computers.

We would benefit from a paradigm shift, see ://www.taketheleap.com/define.html/. Shall we finally move away from this cultural idea: That I have stuff out of merit; and the other guy has no stuff period; so obviously he has no merit because he doesn't have what I have, so rule of tough.

Internet joke last year: I have 1,000 cows. You have none. So?

II. Freebie Theory.

Linked to productivity, freebies work.

The theory here is that well-placed, intentioned freebies, are part of our heritage - our American heritage. Where freebies are targeted, and have an exit strategy and time-line, so the giveaways do not perpetuate without results, and the giveaways actually results in people becoming productive, they are effective.

The benefit of the freebie - it spreads to all those whose gears touch those of the now-oiled recipient.

But it must begin with those most in need - there, at the most needy levels, the lack of productivity pulls us all down. If you start at the stratosphere with boosts, however, no trickling down trickles to where it is needed most. Think of all the new skills and opportunities out there, open through the internet.

Count the ways you received somethin' for nothin' - and it enabled you to exceed what you could have done on your own.

Sometimes a freebie is in getting off the hook for something you really should have been punished for. You got away. Free. Nothing publicized, nothing on your record. Did that help, or hurt? Did you repeat, or do better?

Did your parents pay for your college education? Did you inherit something at a strategic time, so you suddenly had the down payment for a house? Did you marry up, or otherwise receive gifts? Did you land on these shores and find opportunity, freedom and mobility - free of looking so different that you could not escape the stigma of having risen from a slave class somewhere in the world, or with features that identify you as non-European, the norm for assimilation. If your forebears landed that way, and bootstrapped up, should you then justify your headstart from where they left off, rather than having to start from scratch on your own as well?

Freebies sometimes do backfire.

Some people flop - the too-big and too-quick stimulus of the lottery check may lead to waste and ruin, we hear. See ://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/8lotteryWinnersWhoLostTheirMillions.aspx?page=all/ Reward with no work doesn't last long, however. Reward geared to enabling one to become productive, may well.

So, receipt of a stimulus takes preparation, planning, and lining up fiduciary-oriented advisors and barring the cash-suckers. Plan how to use it. There must be constant effort to fight off the sapping kudzu that will spring up all around. Or letting it go to waste.

Others thrive with the freebies they get.

Luck helps, having a relative with means who leaves it to you, laws allowing property to pass to you, credits, refunds, deductions. None of that is merit based. How did freebies help thee? Let us count the ways: See the Faring Well listing, and definition of Welfare at PoseJuxta: Welfare Redefined.

III. Look at Freebies in our History, our Culture

Most have nothing to do with merit.

Many are ill-gotten -- the result of terrorizing other populations.

The giveaway regardless of merit is part of our foundation, our heritage.

A. Exploitive, self-serving freebies.

Giveaways to one group can also be unbearably cruel to others - to which some say, rule of tough, history happens. Look at our treatment of Native Americans, Blacks in centuries of forcing them to provide us freebies. See FN 1

B. Bottom Line - Whether the freebie is with "merit" or by force, giveaways do benefit the recipients, and for the long term if targeted to productivity.

Freebies at the right time, at the right place, can mean getting out of the hole. Getting land and free labor - our heritage as Americans.

That is where we are bogged down now. People don't have that way of getting out of the holes they are in. People are in holes they can't get out of without serious giveaways, so let 's do it. It is better than carrying indefinitely an unproductive, restive, population.

Look at the idea of inheritances, by way of expanding the idea of what freebies really are. An inheritance is a total freebie, without merit, some tax attached, but most property passes - and the transfer is not connected to productivity at all. How many third or fourth generations down from the original moneymaker, the creative one, the pusher, have any creativity at all.

Is it true that a life of managing an inherited portfolio creates a sense of entitlement, not a drive to produce in exchange.

D. Where to Start:

A Freebie that Will Add to Total Productivity - It Has To

Go back to the longer Boosts discussion at Joy of Equivocating, Tax as Restitution? No. Funding and Productivity. Here we focus more on where to begin this era's need for freebies. We all benefit when everyone can be productive, has subsistence, education, is healthy, with backups at home or elsewhere for care-taking. We all get pulled in the hole when we let people stagnate, deep, at the bottom and in the hole, not even on a stable, bottom level of our success "stairs."

But, we do think that freebies have to be in a context, for productivity.

What good is "opportunity," Dear Candidate (the one Who Married Up), if it is across town, the person doesn't know about it, has no way to get there, and the baby is sick.

E. Start here.

Computers, baby, computers.

We put the first freebie on the list, the one with the most impact in education, jobs, health, political participation, at literacy and jobs. Including the Reservations. Especially the Reservations.

Wire the country.

Computers for everyone everywhere. How else to pull us all in, to a united effort, to a common source of information apart from propaganda.

On a practical level, the internet helps find the jobs near you. Print out the coupons. Find the best deals on groceries even. Check out candidates. Learn about issues, away from propaganda. Find facts. Learn English. Learn history on your own. Get literate if you speak English. Learn computer skills - it even helps Grand-Dad's brain. Kids learn how to fix them, local swap centers, repair shops. Come on, you with "disposable incomes" far beyond what you can spend on yourself and your reasonable (?) lifestyle. Invest in your children's future, by stabilizing the culture.

However, doing that will increase competition. Sometimes we think we keep our fellow folks down because that means we can batten down our own hatches without challenge. Keep the bottom ones so busy keeping body and soul together, that they can't apply for our jobs. The American Way of those already arrived?

Of course, put in whatever safeguards we can on cyberbullying, and predatory behavior - the same things the upper level kids deal with. But the dangers of the internet are no reason to keep an entire segment of the population ignorant of the tools they need to get ahead. You doubt the increase in productivity if people have access to information? Go to Dubrovnik, and see the kids, and adults, at the computer banks, for amusement, for business, a hub of opportunity. Europe and other global areas are exceeding us in student education, productivity. Change the paradigm - that we automatically are best. Is it UnAmerican to say we need to catch up? No. It is the ultimate in being American to want the best ability for our country to contribute positively to the world.

We need to catch up. Catch up? Catsup? Ketchup? Teresa Heinz, see ://www.heinz.org/about_board_bio.aspx?BoardID=2/, would you contribute a percentage of the Heinz 57 to computerizing the country? We used to take school field trips to the pickle factory and get a free pickle pin. How about a computer instead of the pin?

If this is unfamiliar to you as an American, and you think it is UnAmerican to raise it, do take a few minutes. Read about it, the expulsions, here from parts of Georgia in the 1830's, the 'Trail of Tears" killing so many, and the lottery following divvying up the gold and farm land for the whites. See ://ourgeorgiahistory.com/indians/cherokee/trail_of_tears.html.

Some freebies came without that particular direct cruelty. The land was already vacant or "vacated" earlier, other occupants earlier pushed back..

No difference. We still gave ourselves freebies. at others' expense. Look how we filled the land up, say with over two centuries of blacks giving us freebies, forced labor, blacks at work, whites building family fortunes.While their own cultures and families and sense of worth was shattered.

Go ahead. Look.

Part of those issues, are behind this proposal -- to give back to others as part of national policy ongoing. We ought to.We owe it. To these particular individuals? Tenuous, because this is now generations away, say some. So do it because we did other people in, whenever we did it, in order to get ourselves ahead, and we need to.

B. Freebies from us to us. FUTU.

More on our history - Colonies needed boosts when altruism failed, as it does. The hale and hearty in Plymouth got tired of working the common plots so the weaker could be fed - so the good governor (Bradford was it?) re-thought the economy going on/ Instead of just a household plot and an acre for one's own, he upped the ante. He gave 20 acres for each person in the household - people could barter, work for each other, work out their own way of addressing all their needs, and they did. Famine, farewell. The stimulus of something for nothing - but it took giving enough away that everyone could get out of the hole. See the Joy of Equivocating site above.

Look up General Sherman's short-lived but significant 40 acres and a mule on the coastal areas of Georgia after the Civil War - the rest of the slaves now free were free to flounder. Land rushes, the Oklahoma land allocation plan that let people line up in their buggies or whatever and take off - claim what you can, stake it out, and it's yours. Free. The "Sooners" they were called - whoever got there soonest won. Or was it those who jumped the gun? See discussion at Joy of Equivocating, Tax as Restitution? No. Funding and Productivity. The GI Bill? That was really earned, but the form it took - education rather than $10 more per week - looked to productivity in the future.